Siting - Wind Energy: Renewable Energy and the Environment - page 190

FIGURE 9.13 Wind farm on Southwest Mesa, near McCamey, Texas. Example of mesa with one row. (Photo
from Cielo Wind Power. With permission.)
energy output increasing as the square of the radius. Notice that the landowner will lease blocks
or areas of land, not just the places where turbines are located. It is interesting in the Texas Wind
Power Project that land leased for the wind farm included all land at the 1,453 m contour and above
(elevation of ridges is 1,830 m). The landowner is now trying to determine if any of the land below
the contour has any wind potential.
Satellite and aerial images are used in micrositing and are available from different sources; some
are free. Flash Earth ( www.lashearth.com ) has the option of switching between different sources,
such as Google Maps, Microsoft VE, and others. The wind farms are fairly distinctive in the images,
primarily because of the roads within the site and the area around each wind turbine. Be sure to
zoom in enough to see the wind turbines, as oil fields show the same pattern, but the roads are not as
wide. In some farming areas, round circles for irrigation sprinklers are very prominent; large circles
FIGURE 9.14 Wind farm in complex terrain, northwest Spain.